Institute for the Arts and Humanities

Institute for the Arts and Humanities

A Penn State course on the arts’ role in race relations will culminate with a public presentation of student projects, which range from paintings and poetry readings to a video screening, at 2 p.m. on Sunday, April 23, in the Palmer Lipcon Auditorium in the Palmer Museum of Art.

Mina 'Vina' Rahimian, a native of Iran, is a second-year doctoral candidate at Penn State in the Design Computing Research Cluster in the Department of Architecture, graduate assistant for the Institute for the Arts and Humanities, and founder/organizer of the “City, Energy, Information” symposium and workshop, which will be held Feb. 3-4 in the Stuckeman Family Building on Penn State’s University Park campus. The symposium is free and open to the public. The workshop is by invitation only.

In 2008, Penn State School of Visual Arts faculty members John Bowman and Ann Shostrom founded First Street Green with the goal of cleaning up the rat-infested vacant lot next to their New York City apartment and creating an “art park” for the Lower East Side community. Today First Street Green not only serves as a valued community asset in the Lower East Side, but also an important place for Penn State art students to gain hands-on experience in arts administration and event planning through internships.

To culminate its yearlong focus on the relationship of music and dance, the Penn State School of Music will host “A Celebration of Viennese Music and Dance,” highlighted by a “A Viennese Ball” at 10 p.m. April 2 in the HUB-Robeson Center. In the week leading up to the ball, the school will present two lectures/demonstrations on 19th-century dance practices and dance music of 19th-century Vienna. All events are free and open to the public.

The College of Arts and Architecture will host exhibits and discussion on the topic of art’s role in social justice movements in the second installment of its Salon Conversations series, March 22–23 at the Palmer Museum of Art on the University Park campus of Penn State.

Plastic—the good, the bad and the ugly—will be the focus of a series of events presented by the Borland Project Space (BPS) in conjunction with the Arts and Design Research Incubator (ADRI), Jan. 25–Feb. 11. The series is highlighted by “The Great Book Move” on Feb. 2, a performative event where the public is invited to help transport 2,000 books with “plastic” in the title from the University Libraries to the Borland Project Space to be used by visiting artist Katrin Hornek to create an on-site sculpture.

Penn State School of Music graduate student Tania Pyatovolenko is used to carting her cello around campus. But one morning early in the fall semester, she took it to a place where she had never performed before — a printmaking class. Pyatovolenko played excerpts from pieces from her upcoming recital, including works by Beethoven, Bach and 20th-century composer George Crumb. The printmaking students listened intently — and then got to work.

Russell Gold, author of the 2015-16 Penn State Reads book "The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World," spoke in an interview with College of Communications instructor Katie O'Toole Tuesday evening (Oct. 13) at a Penn State Reads community event co-sponsored by the University Libraries' Pennsylvania Center for the Book, Penn State's Institute for the Arts and Humanities, Schlow Centre Region Library and the Pennsylvania Humanities Council.

When Richard St. Clair was charged with creating the hats for Penn State Centre Stage’s production of "Titanic," he didn’t simply fall back on his 30 years of experience to get the job done. In May 2015, he took an intensive two-week course in millinery at the Arts University of Bournemouth, England, during which he produced four hats from the "Titanic era," one of which is being used in the show. His trip was funded by an Individual Faculty Grant from the Institute for the Arts and Humanities.

Russell Gold, author of the 2015-16 Penn State Reads book, “The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World,” will be interviewed by Katie O’Toole from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. on Oct.13 at the Days Inn Penn State, downtown State College.

As part of its Truth and Reconciliation series, the Penn State Institute for the Arts and Humanities is sponsoring a speech by James Braxton Peterson, director of Africana studies and associate professor of English at Lehigh University. He will discuss the Black Lives Matter movement at 7 p.m. Oct. 5 in the Attic Room of the State Theatre.

The Truth and Reconciliation film festival, hosted by the Institute for the Arts and Humanities, will address historical and persistent realities of race in America. It will be held Sept.12-13 in The State Theatre and is free and open to the public.